Update

The festival is no longer a festival due to lack of funding, lack of venues and lack of plays. But I’m putting on my play anyway, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. I won’t be acting in it this time, (that was a one-off), now a very good actress named Julia will be playing Anne. She actually approached me after watching the original version and asked if I would please consider putting on the play again and casting her as the lead because it’s the kind of role she dreams of doing. That was a good incentive.

The night I got back from Joburg I went to watch a play called ‘The Boy Who Fell from The Roof’ written by a girl who was at varsity with me and starring a number of my friends. It’s a very contemporary tale of a boy coming to terms with his homosexuality but written in a heightened style and often spoken in choral verse. There are quite a few similarities in my and her writing styles I think, we both write monologues for the characters to speak directly to the audience, we both litter our writing with references of Cape Town life in an attempt to contextualize the story and make it more accessible to our audiences but primarily, we both enjoy a simple, straight-forward, narrative. I was so inspired watching her play; for the first time in a while I felt I could identify with the work happening on stage and see a link between other new work and my own. I was also struck by the importance and value of a simple story told well… we don’t always have to be so bloody cutting edge and experimental, actually. So that was further incentive.

My dad thinks I should put on my play again, he came up with the idea of the ‘Prêt-a-Play’… it means ready play- and that is exactly what our work is. Give us a space and we’ll make our show work there! If you want to see it, it is ready. No fancy lighting or sound effects, just good, new theatre. And he even awarded us a little much needed sponsorship. More incentive.

So with a great actress on board, creative inspiration and some cash to boot, ‘Writing Anne’ will rise again.